The Russian government has warned against promoting “hypotheses” about the cause of the crash of a Russia-bound airliner that killed 38 people in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.
Images of the destroyed fuselage appeared to indicate shrapnel damage and some aviation experts suggested the Azerbaijani Airlines plane may have been hit by air defense systems over the Russian republic from Chechnya.
Before crashing near the Kazakh town of Aktau, the plane was diverted across the Caspian Sea from its destination in Chechnya to western Kazakhstan.
Twenty-nine of the 67 people on board survived. Azerbaijan held a national day of mourning for the victims of the accident on Thursday.
“This is a great tragedy that has become a huge sadness for the Azerbaijani people,” President Ilham Aliyev said on Thursday.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “It would be a mistake to put forward hypotheses before the conclusions of the investigation. Of course, we won't do it and no one should. We have to wait until the investigation is completed. completed.”
The Embraer 190 plane took off Wednesday morning from Baku, the Azerbaijani capital. It was due to fly to Grozny in Chechnya but was diverted due to fog, the airline said.
A surviving passenger told Russian television that he believed the pilot had twice tried to land in heavy fog over Grozny before “the third time something exploded… part of the plane's hull exploded.
The plane was redirected to Aktau airport, located about 450 kilometers to the east. Footage shows the plane heading towards the ground at high speed 3 km (1.9 miles) from the runway, before bursting into flames upon landing.
Kazakh authorities have recovered the flight data recorder and an investigation is underway. Shortly after the accident, reports on state-controlled Russian television said the most likely cause was a collision with a flock of birds.
But this type of collision usually results in the plane sliding towards the nearest airfield, aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia told the Reuters news agency. “You can lose control of the plane, but you don’t suddenly veer off course,” he said.
Justin Crump, of risk consultancy Sibylline, said damage to the plane's interior and exterior indicated that active Russian air defenses in Grozny may have caused the crash. .
“It looks a lot like the detonation of an air defense missile to the rear and left of the plane, if you look at the pattern of shrapnel that we see,” he told the BBC Radio 4.
Authorities in Russia's neighboring regions of Ingushetia and North Ossetia reported drone strikes on Wednesday morning, Reuters news agency reported.
The Chairman of the Senate of Kazakhstan, Ashimbayev Maulen, stressed that the cause of the accident was still unknown.
“None of these countries – Azerbaijan, Russia or Kazakhstan – is interested in hiding information. All information will be made available to the public,” he said.
The passengers were mostly Azerbaijani nationals, but there were also passengers from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Video footage showed survivors crawling from the wreckage, some with visible injuries. The injured are being treated in hospital and 11 of them are in intensive care, the AFP news agency reported.
Embraer, a Brazilian manufacturer, is a smaller rival to Boeing and Airbus and has a strong safety record.
